Photon Science 2017

2017 will become known as a historical year for Photon Science in Hamburg. The European XFEL, the world´s most modern and most powerful X-ray laser facility has started user operation in September. The official inauguration of this international facility on 1 September created a worldwide echo in the scientific communities and in the media. DESY devised this facility, developed the superconducting accelerator technology and constructed the 2 km long linear accelerator beyond the original specification and has underlined with this great success its leading position as a top accelerator laboratory. It is now upon our accelerator crew to assure stable operation of the superconducting linear accelerator and upon our X-ray experts to exploit the unique potential of the facility for basic research. I am most curious to see the first breakthrough results emerging from the experiments in the coming years. A further highlight of the year has been the official inauguration of the Centre for Structural Systems Biology (CSSB) on 29 June in the presence of Ministers, State Secretaries and the First and Second Mayor of Hamburg. It has become a wonderful science building offering a perfect interdisciplinary environment for our researchers. It has been most gratifying to see that the DFG proposal for the Cryo-EM laboratory has been fully approved, allowing now the implementation of a state-of-the-art Cryo-EM technology within CSSB. Most sadly, the excitement of the successful start of CSSB operations has been embittered by the tragic death of a worker. Our thoughts are with his family and friends. Also our FLASH and PETRA III extension halls are now almost fully operational, offering additional and novel experimental capabilities to our users. We are currently analysing options of enhancing our bilateral co-operations with our Swedish, Indian and Russian partners. The comprehensive DESY strategy process is in its final stage. Many brilliant ideas have been developed by our internalcompetence teams which will enter into the DESY Strategy 2020-2035. It is most important that we have been able to identify not only future priorities but as well posteriorities. This will render the laboratory very robust to cope with the future challenges. Moreover the strategy process clearly positioned the PETRA III upgrade project (‘PETRA IV’) as the next large research infrastructure project and devised an ambitious future FEL plan. PETRA IV has to be integrated in the national roadmap during the next update which will tentatively happen in 2019. This process will become embedded into the European initiative called LEAPS (League of European Accelerator-based Photon Sources) which has been initiated by DESY in 2015. LEAPS is aiming for a coordinated upgrade of the European X-ray/laser facilities and for a better integration of neighbouring communities. The launch event took place in Brussels on 13 November. I am very pleased that the construction of the new Center for X-ray and Nano Science (CXNS) will start in 2018. It will focus our photon science research activities and also become the home of our Schleswig-Holstein partner institutes, the Helmholtz Centre Geesthacht and the Christian Albrechts University Kiel. The DESY campus is developing very dynamically. DESY is making a strategic handshake with the University of Hamburg which is planning to allocate the physics and chemistry departments on the Bahrenfeld campus, in a later stage possibly also parts of the biology department. This will foster novel co-operations and new opportunities for the training of students and young scientists. DESY is preparing inter alia a new interdisciplinary Center for Water Science (CWS) together with the university and further partners. Thanks to a special financial support by the German Parliament, we are able to provide a substantial face lift to the laboratory including an upgrade of our guiding system (‘Wegeleitsystem’), the construction of a visitor centre and the modernisation of our buildings. DESY’s photon science infrastructure offers a unique interdisciplinary research opportunity for scientists all over the world, but has also a great potential for industrial applications. This needs to be explored in all aspects in the coming years. The development of an ‘Industrial Case’ for PETRA IV is thus an important element of this strategy as well as the construction of the new Innovation Centre starting end of this year. We are currently investigating the options to launch a new Helmholtz Institute at the Otto-von-Guericke University in Magdeburg in collaboration with DESY, which will a have a focus on novel medical imaging tools for future applications. I want to thank all members of the Photon Science division for their excellent work in the last years and look forward to the coming years which will be more brilliant than ever.